


Summer Jobs

by FeathersAndScales



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: First Kiss, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Kissing, M/M, ear biscuits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersAndScales/pseuds/FeathersAndScales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhett and Link discuss the various summer jobs they had in their younger years and it leads to a heated conversation.</p><p> </p><p>CONTAINS HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Jobs

**Author's Note:**

> ***CONTAINS HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE***

“Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett.”

“And I’m Link, thanks for joining us for another amazing Ear Biscuit at the round table of dim lighting. This week it’s a special Rhett and Link only Biscuit and we have been inspired by the new season. The sun is shining and we are gonna be reminiscing about the Summer Jobs we had in our younger years and we are going to attempt to answer some of your questions as we go.”

“Now our first question goes along with your first job Link. ArmyBoy52 has asked on Twitter, ‘Is mowing lawns a good first job?’”

“I think so, it certainly was for me, but I did have the town’s Chief of Police negotiating the rates of pay. I was twelve at the time and would drive the big sit-on mower right along Lillington Main Street to get to the houses on the other side of town.”

“That’s right, you did!” enthused Rhett, laughing. “I remember one time seeing you sittin’ at the traffic lights on your mower while I was out shopping with my ma!”

There was no filming on the schedule for the day, just audio for the Ear Biscuit and then working through some storyboards and scripts for some upcoming shoots. Knowing this, neither man had put too much effort into their appearance. Rhett’s hair hung loose and wavy across his forehead and he wore a faded, green t-shirt and loose fitting jeans. Even in the dim lighting Rhett could see that Link hadn’t bothered to shave and his hair sat wildly out of place.

Link pulled off his glasses, placing them carefully on the wooden table between them. He rubbed his hand lazily across his eyes as he recounted the story of his next summer job, a tobacco farm, where he’d earned the nickname ‘Mr. Brain Farts’ thanks to his wandering mind.

Rhett sat back, listening and laughing as Link recounted the dumb things he would do to stave of boredom while he worked. It always amused him how much Link’s accent would slip back to their North Carolina roots whenever Link told stories from their childhood. Link always got so caught up in telling Rhett stories that he remembered well, often better than Link, but Rhett never wanted to interrupt him. He wanted to hear his friend’s version of events, wanted to see the childhood they’d shared through Link’s eyes.

They talked, back and forth, about every summer job they’d had. Link told Rhett about the summer he’d spent cleaning up vomit at an amusement park at the boardwalk and Rhett talked about the job he’d gotten with the local transport authority where his supervisor would sleep in her office while he flirted with the hot girls in the office.

It was Link who brought up the one summer job that they had done together. Rhett sat up and leaned his elbows on the edge of the round table, attempting to hide a little behind his large microphone and avoiding making eye contact with Link. They hadn’t talked about that summer in over two decades and the thought of bringing it up in such a public manner twisted in Rhett’s stomach like a hot knife. Rhett knew Link wouldn’t be telling the whole truth of that time but he couldn’t help but wonder; why bring it up at all?

“So I was fourteen and I think you were fifteen, right?” Link asked but continued without waiting for an answer “And we lived on opposite sides of Buies Creek, so we would ride our bikes and meet right in the middle of the town, do you remember the name of the place we would meet at?” Link asked, a smile in his words.

“The Grock,” Rhett answered without raising his head.

“Right. It was this weird little grocery store, I think it’s been torn down now, and it had a couple arcade games and this pinball machine. It was almost exactly half-way between our houses and we would meet there and play some pinball and then go about our daily adventures around Buies Creek.”

Rhett nodded along as memories washed over him; peddling down dirt roads and tarmac streets in nearly 100 degree weather just to see Link. Both boys dripping sweat, dropping their bikes to the ground and shivering in the heavenly, air conditioned store. Link bent over the pinball machine laughing with the same wide smile he still had today.

“We got to know the guy who owned the store.” Link continued with his story.

“He was such a creepy dude. And a real ass,” Rhett interrupted, meeting Link’s eye.

Link let out a snort-laugh in agreement “No kidding Bo. Anyway, we were in there so often that this guy offers us a job, he offers us a dollar—”

“Each, a dollar each.”

“He offers us a dollar an hour each to sort baseball cards, this is back when baseball cards were a big deal. We would sit in this dingy, windowless back room and sort baseball cards for hours. We never told our parents, I mean how dumb were we?”

Rhett held Link’s gaze and shook his head slightly, confusion furrowing his brow. Why was Link talking about this? What did he want Rhett to say?

“It was mostly pretty boring,” Link went on. “There were a couple of magazines back there that…uh…expanded our knowledge of the female anatomy, remember that?”

“Yeah, yeah. So that was the only time we worked together until we started making videos.” Rhett kept talking, knowing where the story would go if he let Link keep going, still unsure as to whether or not Link would really go that far. “Most summers you had to paint houses with your dad, though.”

There was a beat of silence before Link took the hint and started to talk about the frustrations of working with his father. Rhett breathed a sigh of relief. He let Link rant for a little while before interrupting him and bringing the podcast to an end.

Rhett pulled up some notes he’d written on his laptop and spoke hurriedly about making the most out of summer jobs and trying to live in the moment, words he’d originally typed up in the hope of inspiring their young audience. Now he just wanted to get this done and join the members of the crew who were waiting in the main office.

Link completed the outro with some information on the next Ear Biscuit and asked for suggestions on what the audience might want to hear them talk about.

Rhett pushed his mic away and started to grab his things to escape the room while Link checked that everything had recorded OK. 

“Have you ever thought about it?” Link asked, his voice small.

“About what?” Rhett asked, eyes on his laptop screen, attempting to look fully engrossed.

“Come on man, I know you got a better memory than me. I just – we never talked about it, not once and—“

“You tell me then,” Rhett replied, meeting Link’s eyes and holding them. “I wanna hear you tell me what happened, I wanna know what you saw that day.” He was surprised to feel tears threaten at his eyes and he hoped that it was dark enough in the studio that Link wouldn’t notice.

Link laughed awkwardly, obviously taken aback by Rhett’s grave tone.

“I’m serious, I want you to tell me what you think happened after we found the porn magazines in the back room.” Rhett turned in his chair so that his full body faced Link. He reached out one hand and slammed shut his laptop, with the other he gestured to Link to start talking. If Link was going to insist that they talk about it then Rhett was going to make him do the talking.

“We, we kissed,” Link whispered.

“No, no, you were all about giving the details for the podcast. I want you to tell me what happened as If I hadn’t been there,” Rhett spat.

Link stood, as if to leave the room, hesitating in silence for a moment before sinking back into his soft, leather chair.

“We found some nudie mags, it wasn’t the first time we’d seen magazines like that but it was the first time that we’d been left alone with them, somewhere that we wouldn’t get caught. The guy, I don’t even remember his name—“

“Donnie,” Rhett provided.

“Donnie, right, he never came back there to check on us, not once in the two weeks we had been sorting cards. We found a picture in the magazine, it was two girls kissin’.” 

A hint of a smile ghosted across Link’s face. “We thought it was just about the best thing ever…”

“Go on,” Rhett encouraged.

“I told you that it must be weird to kiss someone the same sex, you said ‘lips are lips bo’ and I asked you to kiss me.” Link stared at his fisted hands in his lap; Rhett saw the tight skin on his knuckles turning white. “I thought you would laugh at me or hit me or anything but you actually did.”

“I kissed you.”

“You did.”

“Tell me what it was like.” Rhett demanded, voice low and rough. He wanted to make it hard for Link, he tried to stay angry but the memory alone of the kiss was softening the anger in his chest. 

“You were there, man.”

“Tell me what it was like for you?” Rhett let his voice soften, wanting to coax out of Link the answer to the question he’d never dared ask before.

“It was dry,” Link chuckled faintly. “So I licked my lips and it seemed like you liked that so I did it again.”

Rhett’s heart pounded in his chest as Link described their first and only kiss. Excitement at the memory of it mixed with a sickening tightness in his stomach at what was to come next. Of course he’d liked it, he’d liked everything about Link. He nodded curtly, indicating for Link to continue.

“You whispered my name, so softly that I wasn’t sure that I’d really heard it and then…”

“And then Donnie came in,” Rhett supplied, anger once again present in his tone. “Donnie came in and pushed you, hard, and I pushed him back, got him away from you. He called us disgusting faggots, screamed at us that we were going to hell!” He took a shaking breath “Tell me what happened next Link.”

“Y-you grabbed my hand,” Link said, his voice barely above a whisper. Tears started falling, unchecked, down his bristly face. “You stepped in front of me, and you told him to leave us alone.”

“And then you pulled your hand from mine and you walked away from me, do you remember what you said?”

“Rhett—”

“Do. You. Remember?”

“Yes. I told you not to touch me, I called you—I called you a faggot. But I was so scared Rhett, so, so scared. I thought he was gonna hurt us, or lock us in that back room. I thought he would tell everyone in the town that we were gay if I didn’t do something to make him see!”

Rhett fought against the swell of rage that threatened to spill over. He’d spent so long not letting himself think about that day, told himself to forget it, never bringing it up. He stood from his chair and paced round the room wildly. The very next day he and Link had been back together, riding their bikes through Buies Creek and he hadn’t let himself ask Link why. Why did you betray me? He’d pushed down the feelings so deep and for so long that now they were brought back to the surface he had no idea how to deal with them.

“I’m so sorry Rhett, so sorry”. Link’s words caught around sobs as more tears fell from his eyes. 

Rhett walked back over to where Link sat, his head now in his hands, fat rivulets running from his eyes down his arms.

“Would it really have been so bad Link, if the fucking hicks of Buies Creek had thought we were gay?” Rhett asked sincerely.

Link didn’t answer, quiet, broken sobs shaking his whole body. Rhett gripped the edge of the table and lowered himself so that he was kneeling between Link’s feet. He grabbed Link’s hands, pulling them away from his face so he could look his best friend in the eye.

“Why bo? Why’d ya do it?”

“I was scared Rhett—”

“I was scared too Link but I would’ve never done that to you.”

“You don’t understand. I was scared of Donnie and I was scared of what my dad would do and I was scared about what the kids at school would say, but more than that, more than anything I was scared that I’d lose you, I was so scared that you would hate me for wanting you to kiss me, I thought—”

Rhett didn’t let him continue. He dropped Link’s hands and moved his own up to Link’s face. The coarse hairs grated against Rhett fingers as he stroked roughly along Link’s jaw. He raised himself up on his knees and pulled Link’s head gently down so that they were nose-to-nose. He moved slowly, millimetre by millimetre until their lips touched. Link’s lips were warm and wet and Rhett flicked out his tongue to taste them. The bitter saltiness of tears hit him first and then the sweet and familiar peanut-peppermint combination of Link’s lip balm. The kiss was short and sweet but it left Rhett’s heart pounding hard insode his chest. 

Rhett felt rather than heard Link’s sigh of relief. “I am so sorry Rhett. I’ve waited so long, too long, to tell you that, but it’s true.”

Rhett pulled his oldest friend into a tight hug, rubbing slow circles into Links back.

“It’s OK Link. It’s gonna be OK.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to RhinkyDink for editing this (and then patiently waiting for me to literally leave the country to upload it) and giving me amazing suggestions. 
> 
> I messed with the ‘who-said-what’ of the episode and I fudged the ages a bit, I think that they were actually younger when they had the baseball card sorting job together. I love listening to the Rhett and Link only Ear Biscuits, there’s definitely gonna be more fic from me based around them.
> 
> Inspired by Ep. 35 Rhett & Link "Summer Jobs" - http://podbay.fm/show/717407884/e/1401465962?autostart=1
> 
> It’s a real nice podcast to listen to if you haven’t already you’ve got the time!


End file.
